Target Volume

Targets can be given an optional volume which is used to decide if particles will be influenced by the target or not. If you are working with a curve target you should view the Curve Target Volume page.

The settings for a target’s volume can be seen in the target’s Volume Data rollout.

Activating a Volume

By default a target’s volume is deactivated. Without an active volume, the target will affect all particles within the simulation, regardless of the distance between them. A volume is deactivated if any of its required dimensions are set to 0. The required dimensions differ depending on the volume type and can be seen in the below table:

Volume Type

Required Dimensions

Sphere

Radius

Capsule

Radius

Box

Width, Height and Depth

Curve

None

As soon as all required dimensions for the volume are set to a value larger than 0, the volume is active. You can see if a target volume is activated by looking at the small LED image at the top of the Volume Data rollout.

Target volumes are drawn in the Maya view-port by a VolumeLocatorNode. As well as view-port rendering, these nodes also allow you to edit the volume using a context manipulator. You can access this by choosing the Show Manipulator Tool (Usually the ‘t’ key) with a target selected.

Inactive Volume

If the target’s volume is not enabled, all particles within the system will be affected by it, regardless of the distance between them.

Active Volume

If a target’s volume is activated, only particles within the volume will be affected by that target. Any particles outside the volume will not be aware of the target’s existence and will not be influenced by it.

Volume Attributes

Volume Type

Position targets can use any of the standard volume types defined for Particle Flocker entities. You can read more about the standard volume types in the Volume Types section.

Dimensions

The dimensions shown will change depending on the volume type selected, for example a sphere will only show a Radius dimension where as a box will show a Width, Height and Depth dimension. See Volume Types for more details.

Volume Influence

This attribute defines how the volume should influence particles inside it. There are 2 modes; Full and Linear Falloff.

Full

When using this mode, all particles within the volume will be fully affected by the target, regardless how near to the centre or edge of the volume they are

Linear Falloff

When using this mode, particles will be affected more by this target the nearer to the centre of the volume they are. The falloff is calculated linearly so that they receive 100% influence at the centre and 0% at the edges as shown in the image below:

Draw Target Volume

Use this option to show or hide the target’s volume in the view-ports.